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“Intersectionality shows us that everyone could do better; that every attempt at rolling back discrimination could work harder and be more inclusive. But it should also remind us that people themselves are more than a simple label: “white feminist”; “middle-class man”; “posh boy”; “Twitter bully”. Here are some of the things I know that the kind of feminists regularly decried for their privilege have had to deal with, in private: eating disorder relapses; rape; the stalking of their children; redundancy; clinical depression; the sectioning of a family member; an anxiety disorder that made every train ride and theatre trip an agony. (Yes, one of those descriptions is me.)
None of this is to say that feminism shouldn’t be open to criticism. When Caroline Crampton and I got together our bloggers last year for a New Statesman debate about feminism, the response was . . . well, there were two responses. There was criticism that was constructive: for example, the deviously persuasive Karen Ingala Smith managed to parlay her disappointment that we didn’t talk enough about rape into making me join the board of her VAWG charity. And there was criticism that was destructive, aimed at wounding us for not representing every possible permutation of womanhood. (I laughed when one particularly enthusiastic deconstructor, when asked: “Well, how can you possibly make a six-person panel totally representative of half of humanity?”, came back with, “Oh, that’s why I don’t believe in panel discussions.”)”
Megan Murphy last night at the Vancouver Public Library:
“Despite what transactivists claim it is not illegal to understand that biological sex is real and that it matters which is essentially what I and other women have been smeared, censored and no-platformed for saying . It’s also not illegal to understand that a woman is an adult human female. It’s not illegal to defend women’s transition houses and to argue that when women are escaping male violence they should have access to spaces that make them feel safe where they can speak to women who understand what it’s like to grow up female in this world and where they can be assured that they won’t be made more vulnerable by having to share a room with a man.
It is not illegal to understand that male bodies and female bodies are different and that women and girls have the right to compete in sports under fair terms against other women and girls not against men who, in most cases, would have an unfair advantage…
It’s not illegal in Canada for lesbians to limit their choices in intimate partners to women only and to refuse sexual partners with penises.”
— Meghan Murphy (Excerpt from speech at Vancouver Public Library)
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